acknowledging the compliment of Hassan.
“It is not clear to me,” said Hassan, “why a simple date merchant, like my
friend. Hakim of Tor, and I, a lowly bandit, would be of interest to one so
august as yourself.”
The man regarded Hassan. “Once,” said he, “you took something from me, something
in which I was interested.”
“I am a bandit,” said Hassan, in cheerful explanation. “It is my business.
Perhaps I could return it to you, if you were serious about its recovery.”
“I have recovered it myself,” said he.
“Then I have little with which to bargain,” admitted Hassan. “What was it I
took, in which you were interested?”
“A trifle,” said the man.
“Perhaps it was another bandit,” suggested Hassan. “Many of us, veiled, resemble
one another.”
“I witnessed the theft,” said he. “You did not deign to conceal your features.”
“Perhaps that was unwise on my part,” volunteered Hassan. He was clearly
curious. “Yet I do not recollect purloining anything upon an occasion on which
you were present. Indeed, this is my first visit to your kasbah.”
“You did not recognize me,” said the man.
“I did not mean to be uncivil,” said Hassan.
“You were in reasonable haste,” said the man.
“My business must often be conducted with dispatch,” admitted Hassan. “What was
it I took?” he asked.
“A bauble,” said the man.
“I hope that you will forgive me,” said Hassan. “Further, in the light of the
fact that you have recovered that in which you were interested, whatever it is,
I trust that you will be willing to let bygones be bygones, and permit myself
and my friend to depart, returning to us our kaiila, garments and accouterments,
and perhaps bestowing upon us some water and supplies. We will then be on our
way, commending your generosity and hospitality at the campfires, and will
bother you no longer.”
“I am afraid that will not be possible,” said the man.
“I was not optimistic,” admitted Hassan.
“You are a bandit,” pointed out the figure on the dais.
“Doubtless each of us has our own business,” said Hassan. “Being a bandit is my
business. Surely you would not hold one’s business against him.”
“No,” said the man, “but 1, too, have my business, and part of my business is to
apprehend and punish bandits. You would surely not hold my business against me.”
“Of course not,” said Hassan. “That would be riot only irrational, but
discourteous.” He indicated me with his head. “I have been traveling with this
fellow,” he said, “a clumsy, but well-meaning oaf, a boorish date merchant,
Hakim of Tor, not overly bright, but good hearted. We fell together by accident.
Should you free him, your generosity and hospitality would be commended at the
campfires.”
I did not care greatly for Hassan’s description. I am not boorish.
“They must find other things of which to speak at the campfires,” said the man.
He looked about himself. On the dais, with him, were several men, low tables of
food, fruit, stews, tidbits of roast verr, assorted breads. He and the males
were veiled. About the dais, kneeling, waiting to serve, were slave girls, some
in high collars, clad in strands of slave silk. They were not veiled. Among the
upper classes in the Tahari, it is scandalously erotic, generally, that a
female’s mouth should not be concealed. To see a girl’s lips and teeth is a
charged experience. To touch a girl’s teeth with your teeth is prelude to the
seizure of her body, an act that one would engage in only with a bold, brazen
mate, or with one’s shameless slave girl, with whom one can do with, to her joy,
precisely as one pleases.
“I have waited long to have you at my feet,” said the man. Then he lifted his
finger. Four of the girls, with a jangle of slave bells, fled to Hassan and
myself. They regarded the figure on the dais, veiled, sitting cross-legged.
“Please them,” he said. We struggled. With lips, and tongue, and small fingers,
the girls addressed themselves to our pleasures. The binding fiber cut into our
wrists. The ropes on our neck held us in place. We could not free ourselves.
Again the veiled man lifted his finger. Other girls, with bits of food, gave us
to feed, with their tiny fingers placing tidbits, delicacies, into our months.
One girl held back our head, and others, from goblets, gave us of wines, Turian
wine, sweet and thick, Ta wine, from the famed Ta grapes, from the terraces of
Cos, wines even, Ka-la-nas, sweets and drys, from distant Ar. Our heads swirled.
We heard music. Musicians had entered the room. “Feast,” said the man on the
dais. He clapped his hands. We shook our heads, trying to clear the wines from
them. We struggled. I pulled with my head away from the eager lips and hands of
the slave girl who sought to hold and kiss me. “Tafa loves you, “ she whispered,
kissing me. A guard’s hand held my hair, keeping my head in place. I felt the
ropes burn on my neck. I closed my eyes. I felt her lips beneath my left ear,
biting and kissing. “Tafa loves you. Master,” she whispered. “Let Tafa please
you.” I was startled. Suddenly I realized that this was the same girl who had
been one of the pair captured by Hassan in the desert, shortly before I had
first made his acquaintance. She had been the proud free woman, sold at Two
Scimitars, with Zina, the traitress. It was difficult now to see in this
lascivious, delicious slave, who seemed born to the collar, the proud free woman
whom Hassan had earlier captured, and who had been later sold at the Bakah oasis
of Two Scimitars. Some Goreans maintain that all women are born to the collar,
and require only to find that man strong enough to put it on them.
I tried to pull away, but was held. “Tafa loves you,” she whispered. “Let Tafa
give you pleasure.” I felt the lips of another girl at my leg and waist.
The men, veiled, observed complacently.
Again the man on the dais clapped his hands. Before us now on the tiles, in the
basic position of the slave dance, too, her hands lifted over her head, wrists
back to back, stood a chained girl.
Hassan’s eyes were hard.
It was Alyena.
“Do you remember this one?” asked the veiled man, of Hassan.
“Yes,” said Hassan.
“This is that of which,” said the man, “I spoke earlier. This is that in which I
was once interested. This is that which you once took from me. This is the
trifle, the bauble. I have now recovered it.”
Alyena trembled under the eyes of Hassan. She wore graceful, golden chains.
“It was recovered,” he said, “in the vicinity of Red Rock.”
There were tears in Alyena’s eyes. She stood in the position of the slave
dance, a girl waiting to be commanded to please men.
“She was with several men,” said the man on the dais. “They fought well,
with skill and savagery, and broke through to the desert beyond Red Rock.”
How was it then, I wondered, that lovely Alyena stood here, on these tiles,
slave?
“Then, most peculiarly,” said t
he man, “when apparently safe, escaped with her
escort, she, suddenly, turned her kaiila about, returning, fleeing back to Red
Rock.”
The oasis, or much of it, I knew, would have been in flames at that time.
“She was, of course, almost immediately captured,” said the man.
“She was crying the name ‘Hasan’.”
I could see that this did not please Hassan at all. His will had been disobeyed.
Further, I recalled that the girl had, in Red Rock, under stress, cried his
name, speaking it, though she was only a girl in bondage.
“I love you, master,” cried the girl. “I wanted to be with you! At your side!”
“You are a runaway slave girl,” he said.
She wept, but did not break the position of the slave dance. “Too,” said he, “at
the oasis you cried my name.” These were serious offenses.
“Forgive me, Master,” she cried. “I love you!” She had risked her life to return
to Hassan. She loved him. Yet a slave girl owes her master absolute obedience.
She had violated his will in two particulars. I did not think it would go easily
with her. Love on Gor does not purchase a girl lenience; it does not mitigate
her bondage, nor compromise her servitude, but rather renders it the more
complete, the more helpless and abject.
“Master,” wept the girl.
What a beautiful piece of slave flesh Alyena was, so vulnerable, so feminine,
but how could she have been otherwise when owned by Gorean men? The man on the
dais languidly lifted his finger. The musicians readied themselves. Alyena
looked upon Hassan, agonized.
“What shall I do, Master?” she begged. She wore a golden metal dancing collar
about her throat, golden chains looped from her wrists, gracefully to the collar
ring, then fell to her ankles; there are varieties of Tahari dancing chains; she
wore the oval and collar; briefly, in readying a girl, after she has been belled
and silked, and bangled, and has been made up, and touched with slave perfume,
she kneels, head down in a large oval of light gleaming chain, extending her
wrists before her; fastened at the sides of the top of the oval are two wrist
rings, at the sides of the lower loop of the oval two ankle rings; the oval is
then pulled inward and the wrist and ankle rings fastened on the slave; her
throat is then locked in the dancing collar, which has, under the chin, an open
snap ring: with the left hand the oval is then gathered together, so the two
strands of chain lie in the palm of the left hand, whence, lifted, they are
placed inside the snap ring, which is then snapped shut, and locked; the two
strands of chain flow freely in the snap ring; accordingly, though the girl’s
wrists and ankles are fastened at generous, though inflexible limits from one
another, usually about a yard for the wrists and about eighteen inches for the
ankles, much of the chain may be played through, and back through, the collar
ring; this permits a skillful girl a great deal of beautiful chain work: the
oval and collar is traditional in the Tahari; it enhances a girl’s beauty; it
interferes little with her dance, though it imposes subtle, sensuous limits upon
it; a good dancer uses these limits, exploiting them deliciously; for example,
she may extend a wrist, subtly holding the chain at her waist with her other
hand; the chain slides through the ring, yet short of the expected movement; the
chain stops her wrist; her wrist rebels, but is helpless; it must yield; her
head falls; she is a chained slave girl.
“Master, what shall I do?” begged Alyena. How beautiful she was.
All eyes were upon her. Aside from her jewelries, her bells, the oval and
collar, the cosmetics, the heady slave perfume, she wore six ribbons of silk,
yellow, three before and three behind, some four feet in length, depending from
her collar. I had always admired her brand. It was deep and delicate, and
beautifully done.
“Master!” cried Alyena.
The finger of the man on the dais, he veiled in red, prepared to fall.
“Dance, Slave,” said Hassan. The man’s finger fell languidly, the musicians
began to play. Alyena, before us, in the chains of the Tahari, danced. She was a
most beautiful trifle, a most lovely bauble.
We feasted late, and were much pleased by the beauties of the Salt Ubar.
Finally, he said, “It is late. And you must retire, for you must rise before
dawn.”
Hours before, Alyena had been dismissed from the audience chamber of the Guard
of the Dunes, the Salt Ubar.
“Take her to the guard room,” he said. “There let her give pleasure to the men.”
Alyena, still in her chains, was pulled by the hair from the room.
“You veil yourself in the manner of the Char,” I said, “but I do not think you
of the Char.”
“No,” said the man on the dais.
“I had not known you were the Salt Ubar,” said 1.
“Many do not know that,” said the man.
“Why are you and your men veiled?” I asked.
“It is customary for the men of the Guard of the Dunes to veil themselves,” said
he. “Their allegiance is to no tribe, but to the protection of the salt. In
anonymity is a disguise for them. Freely may they move about when unveiled, none
knowing they are in my fee. Veiled, their actions cannot be well traced to an
individual, but only to an institution, my Ubarate.”
“You speak highly of your office,” I said.
“Few know the men of the Salt Ubar,” said he. “And, veiled, anonymous, all fear
them.”
“I do not fear them,” said Hassan. “Free me, and give me a Scimitar, and we
shall make test of the matter.”
“Are there others here, too, I know?” I asked.
“Perhaps,” said the man. Then he turned to the others. Unveil yourselves,” he
said.
The men removed the scarlet veils. “Hamid,” said I, “lieutenant to Shakar,
captain of the Aretai.” I nodded.
The man looked at me with hatred. His hand was at a dagger in his sash. “Let me
slay him now,” he said.
“Perhaps you would have better fortune than when you in stealth struck Suleiman
Pasha,” I said.
The man cried out in rage.
The leader, the Salt Ubar, lifted his finger and the man subsided, his eyes
blazing.
“There is another here I know,” I said, nodding toward a small fellow, sitting
beside the Salt Ubar, “though he is now more richly robed than when last I saw
him.”
“He is my eyes and ears in Tor,” said the Salt Ubar.
“Abdul the water carrier,” said I. “I once mistook you for someone else,” I
said.
“Oh?” he said.
“It does not matter now,” I said. I smiled to myself. I had thought him to be
the “Abdul” of the message, that which had been placed in the scalp of the
message girt, Veema, who had been sent mysteriously to the house of Samos in
Port Kar. I still did not know who had sent the message. As now seemed clear to
me, the message must have referred to Abdul, the Salt Ubar. He who had sent the
message had doubtless been of the Tahari. It had doubtless not occurred to him
that the message might have be
en misconstrued. In the historic sense, the
planetary sense, there would have been only one likely “Abdul” in the Tahari at
this time, the potent, powerful, dreaded Guard of the Dunes, the Salt Ubar. He
would be a most formidable minion of Kurii. Neither Samos nor myself, however,
though we had heard of the Salt Ubar, had known his name. Further, his name is
not often casually mentioned in the Tahari. It is difficult to know who are and
who are not his spies. His men belong to various tribes. I might have behaved
differently in the Tahari had I earlier known the name of the Salt Ubar. I
wondered who had sent the message, “Beware Abdul.” How complacent I had been,
how sure that I bad earlier penetrated that mystery.
“May I cut his throat?” asked the water carrier.
“We have other plans for our friend,” said the Salt Ubar. He had not yet
unveiled himself, though his men, at his command, had done so.
“Have you long been known as Abdul?” I asked the Salt Ubar.
“For some five years,” said be, “since I infiltrated the kasbah and deposed my
predecessor.”
“You serve Kurii,” I said.
The man shrugged. “You serve Priest-Kings,” said he. “We two have much in
common, for we both are mercenaries. Only you are less wise than I, for you do
not serve upon that side which will taste the salt of victory.”
“Priest-Kings are formidable enemies,” said I.
“Not so formidable as Kurii,” said he. “The Kur,” said he, “is persistent, It is
tenacious. It is fierce. It will have its way. The Priest-Kings will fall. They
will fail.”
I thought that what he said might be true. The Kur is determined, aggressive,
merciless. It is highly intelligent, it lusts for blood, it will kill for
territory and meat. The Priest-King is a relatively gentle organism, delicate
and stately. It has little interest in conflict, its military posture is almost
invariably defensive; it asks little more than to be left alone. I did not know
if Priest-Kings, with all their brilliance, and all their great stores of
knowledge on their scent-tapes, had a glandular and neurological system with
which the motivations and nature of Kurii could be understood. The true nature
of the Kurii might elude them, almost physiologically, like a menacing color
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